As of late, we’ve been mulling over whether to move. Husband and I have lengthy commutes and moving even 15 minutes from where we live now could save us both a significant amount of time each day.

But then Big Brother started school. We have met so many people in our neighbourhood since September, we’re bumping into more friends and acquaintances in the grocery store than ever before and for the first time, someone knocked on our door and asked if the kids could come out to play. And if that didn’t ruin me enough, we knew kids in every class at the Christmas concert.

We HAVE to stay.

So, for now, we are staying put in our happy, humble home. And you know what that means. We can start planning more projects! (Did you hear that? It was Husband’s audible sigh).

The 2015 goals from last year’s anniversary post were fairly simple:

Paint down the stairs and the back-door landing. Done! I’ve got to give Husband credit because this was a tough job with two-storey ceilings at its height, but he made it work.While we’re at it, paint the interior of the back door. Love this project! It made such a dramatic difference to the back door area when we painted the formerly white door a dark grey.It’s finally time to replace the deck. Or so I said at this time last year. The thing was, we were really feeling unsure about whether we wanted to move so we decided not to put the money into the deck until we decided.

With that, goals for 2016:

Finally replace the bloody deck. The front porch also needs to be completely rebuilt.Paint the exterior of the house. Or put on vinyl siding? I don’t know. Do you have opinions?Re-do the kitchen. Our 1970s kitchen with all its inefficiencies must go.

Clearly we can’t do everything, but if I aim high, and hire a sitter every once and awhile, some of this might get done. And if not this year, maybe next. Or the one after that. Because the work will be here and we will be here.